Brandon Jones and the No. 19 Menards Jeld-Wen team traveled down the road to Atlanta Motor Speedway for the second race of the 2018 season. The 1.54-mile tri-oval was the first intermediate track that Jones had run for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in the Xfinity Series. Jones made it to the final round of qualifying improving every round and started the 163-mile race from the seventh place position.

He ran in the top-15 for stage one and started stage 2 in eighth. Jones reported that his Toyota Camry was really loose. He was running in the top-10 until lap 54 when his right front tire went flat causing him to slide up the track and swipe the wall. Jones green flag pitted for right-side tires only and the Menards team was able to get Jones back on the track only one lap down.

Crew chief Chris Gabehart advised Jones that the new strategy was to fight for the Lucky Dog position and hope for a caution. Jones started his rally from 36th gaining over 19 positions passing everyone he could to hold on to the Lucky Dog, but unfortunately the caution never came. Jones fought hard and was scored in the 17th position when the race ended.

Kevin Harvick won the race followed by Joey Logano, Christopher Bell, John H. Nemechek and Elliott Sadler rounded out the top five.

How was your run today?“Today wasn’t really the day we wanted. It was heading towards the day we were hoping for and I ended up having a right front go down. I need to do a better job at anticipating when that’s going to happen. It was weird. It was a lap before having something break and a right front go down at the same time we were trying to determine what was going on. Considering that, not a bad day. It was all under green flag pit stops. Not where we want to be but we’ll bounce back next week.”